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ExecuteSQL, Level: Advanced, SQL, Version: FM 13 or later, Virtual List

2-Column Magic Value Lists

Kevin Frank

Disclaimer: the techniques shown in this article are provided on an as-is basis. Use with appropriate caution and at your own risk.

Acknowledgements: today’s article would not have been written without the inspiration provided by Bruce Robertson, John Ahn (FM 12 ExecuteSQL Unconference Session), Andries Heylen (Magic Value Lists), Marcelo Piñeyro (How to Extend FileMaker Value List Sort Capabilities) and Jonathan Fletcher (It’s Sorta A Value List Thing).

Introduction

Last year, in Custom Field-Based Value Lists, we looked at a technique to enable single-column field-based value lists to display their contents in entry order, as opposed to standard index-based alphanumeric order. For example using the contents of this field (from a single-record table) as the basis for a value list…

2019-10-13_135535.png

…we came up with a way to sort our value list (a.k.a. “VL”) items like so…

2019-10-13_135628

…as opposed to what you would get with a standard field-based VL, i.e., this:

2019-10-13_135646.png

I ended the article by saying…

Today’s article looked at value lists based on return-separated values in a single field. In an upcoming article we’ll explore implementing a similar technique for sorted two-column value lists based on entries in a dedicated value lists table where each list item lives in its own record.

…and now, nineteen months later, am ready to pick up where we left off last time, and to avoid repetition, will assume the reader is at least somewhat familiar with the issues and techniques covered in that article (Custom Field-Based Value Lists).

Note: if you aren’t clear on why a 2-column value list might be preferable to its single-column counterpart (or to a custom value list for that matter), check out Thinking About Value Lists, part 1.

Demo Files

Continue reading “2-Column Magic Value Lists” →

JSON, Level: Advanced, Version: FM 18 or later

FM18: JSON.InsertArrayElement

Kevin Frank

18 Sep 2022 – these custom functions have been upgraded – see JSON Custom Functions for FM 19.5, part 2 for details.

Disclaimer: the technique shown in this article is provided on an as-is basis. Use with appropriate caution and at your own risk.

Demo file: JSON-Array-Custom-Functions.zip (requires FM 18 or later)

201-08-23-animated

Have you ever noticed that FileMaker does not provide a JSON function to insert a new element into an existing array? For example, given this array (and bearing in mind that JSON uses a zero-based index)…

[ “A” , “B” , “C” , “D” ]

…JSONSetElement ( array ; 2 ; “XXX” ) will transform it to…

[ “A” , “B” , “XXX” , “D” ]

… but we have no native JSON function to “push” a new element into position 2 so that existing elements slide one position rightward to accommodate, like so:

[ “A” , “B” , “XXX” , “C” , “D” ]

Continue reading “FM18: JSON.InsertArrayElement” →

JSON, Level: Advanced, Version: FM 18 or later

FM18: JSON.UpdateArrayElement

Kevin Frank

18 Sep 2022 – these custom functions have been upgraded – see JSON Custom Functions for FM 19.5, part 2 for details.

Disclaimer: the technique shown in this article is an attempt to work around an annoyance that can crop up when using FileMaker’s native JSONSetElement function, and is provided on an as-is basis. Use with appropriate caution and at your own risk.

Acknowledgement: I owe a debt of gratitude to Paul Jansen for many illuminating JSON-related discussions over the last year or so. Thank you Paul.

Introduction

Today we’re going to look at a custom function, JSON.UpdateArrayElement, written to circumvent a problem you may encounter when using JSONSetElement. (Note: see Thinking About JSON, part 1 and part 2 if you need a basic FM/JSON overview or refresher.)

Demo file: JSON-UpdateArrayElement-v3.zip (requires FM 18 or later)

2019-08-13_16-02-58.png

Why did I write a custom function to do what JSONSetElement apparently already does? Because under certain circumstances JSONSetElement does not work the way I believe it should. We’ll get to the custom function in a minute, but first there are a couple issues we need to examine. Continue reading “FM18: JSON.UpdateArrayElement” →

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 18 or later

New in FM 18: While, part 2

Kevin Frank

Today we’re going to dig a little deeper into the new-in-18 While function, and to avoid repetition, will assume readers are familiar with last month’s article on SetRecursion and While. We’ll look at some new examples ranging from basic to advanced, investigate the circumstances under which While can use variables previously declared via Let, and check out some benchmark results comparing While vs. CustomList.

Demo Files

Continue reading “New in FM 18: While, part 2” →

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 18 or later

New in FM 18: SetRecursion and While

Kevin Frank

Author’s note: Inevitable comparisons will be drawn between the new While function and the venerable CustomList custom function, which I wrote about at length several years ago. Preliminary testing indicates that CustomList is faster under certain circumstances and While is faster under others. In my opinion, both of them belong in your developer tool kit.

Today we’re going to take a look at two new functions introduced in FileMaker 18: SetRecursion and While, and you can follow along in today’s demo files if you are so inclined.

maclaurin-series.png

Demo files: While-Sandbox.zip and Maclaurin-Series.zip

Continue reading “New in FM 18: SetRecursion and While” →

JSON, Level: Advanced, Version: FM 16 or later

Magic Portals

Kevin Frank

Today we’re going to look at a design pattern I’ve recently been using to accommodate a client request. The request is to be able to view and edit a parent, all related children, and all related grandchildren via a single “flattened” interface.

2019-04-24_16-22-61

Demo file: magic-portals.zip (requires FM 16 or later) Continue reading “Magic Portals” →

ExecuteSQL, Level: Intermediate, SQL, Virtual List

Bill of Materials

Kevin Frank

29 Mar 2019: Demo file has been updated to v2. See comments for details.

Editor’s note: Geoff Gerhard of Creative Solutions is one of those “quiet” developers who has been helpfully sharing his knowledge in online FileMaker forums for more than 20 years. I personally have benefited enormously from his expertise, and am pleased to feature his first appearance as a guest author here on FileMaker Hacks.

Demo file: BillOfMaterialsDemo-v2.zip

Continue reading “Bill of Materials” →

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 12 or later

Disabling New Window

Kevin Frank

Today I want to talk about a potential problem lurking in a small percentage of FileMaker solutions, and discuss various options for mitigating it.

As you may know, there are three ways to display a new window…

  1. Via the New Window script step
  2. Via the Go To Related Record script step
  3. Manually via Window > New Window

…and it’s this last option that can, depending on circumstances, be problematical.

2019-02-23_13-06-51.png

I say “depending on circumstances” because typically it’s okay for a user to spawn a new window, which is to say that doing so doesn’t pose any challenges beyond those the developer already faces when building a multi-user system, which presumably the developer has considered and has intelligently dealt with.

Continue reading “Disabling New Window” →

JSON, Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 16 or later

Creating and Using Invisible Window IDs

Paul Jansen

Editor’s note: I first became aware of Paul Jansen when I licensed his FMTools in the late 1990s, and I finally had the pleasure of meeting him last June at dotFMP after 20 years of online and voice communication. It’s an honor and a privilege to welcome him to FileMaker Hacks as a guest author.

FileMaker is pretty flexible. As developers we are given options as to how to reference things; fields, scripts and layouts can be referenced by name or number/id. Whilst we know that referencing things by name is more fragile, it is still a very useful capability to have, but it is definitely more robust to reference by ID…

Windows are a bit of an odd one out; we can only reference them by name.

As windows are probably the most likely things to have their names changed during normal day to day usage of a FileMaker Database it would be really useful if we could keep track of them by an ID independent of the displayed window title. Another benefit of having access to an ID to identify a window is that we then have to option to very easily store and access window specific variables. Kevin has made use of window specific variables based upon the window name in several articles and I suggest that access to a numeric ID that was independent of the window title would be an improvement. Continue reading “Creating and Using Invisible Window IDs” →